The Mail

Letters respond to Margaret Talbot’s article on the use of color on Greek and Roman sculptures and Jennifer Gonnerman’s report on Philadelphia’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner.

True Colors

Margaret Talbot’s article on polychromy in classical Greek and Roman sculpture reveals that the figures we are used to seeing as white were, in fact, fully colored (“Color Blind,” October 29th). It also shows that the techniques used to identify the applications of those pigments are clearly in their infancy. Nothing Talbot writes credibly explains how these ancient sculptors—driven by a naturalistic aesthetic so intense that they labored in marble in order to replicate muscles beneath the surface of human skin and to painstakingly re-create delicate drapery—would allow painters to effectively obliterate the subtlety of their hard effort with daubs of color, at least in the way that pigment is unconvincingly applied to modern replicas.

Scott Davis Jones

Valley Village, Calif.

Talbot’s article brought to mind the video game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The game is a fictional re-creation of the Peloponnesian War in all its colorful glory. The game’s designers chose to depict the people and the statuary of the period in the vibrant tones that Talbot describes. At one point, I stood next to the Athena Promachos atop the Acropolis, surrounded by dozens of Greeks whose skin hues varied from dark brown to pale white. Nearby, towering statues were dressed in bright colors. The Parthenon’s intricately detailed façade stood in stark contrast to the bleached ruins we know today. So much of the ancient world has been whitewashed, and it is heartening to know that popular culture is now painting our past with its true colors.

Peter James

St. Louis, Mo.

In her otherwise thorough piece, Talbot does not mention the medium that carries the colors in classical sculpture. Often, it was encaustic painting—pigment mixed with melted beeswax and sometimes hardened with tree resin—examples of which can be found in the Fayum funerary portraits. The paint can survive, under the right conditions, for some two thousand years, and it has reëmerged as a vibrant medium of contemporary art, most famously in the work of Jasper Johns.

Charlotte Cooper

Lincoln, Calif.

Despite claims from the alt-right, Talbot confirms that the whiteness we are accustomed to seeing on ancient sculpture is a consequence of time’s passage and misinterpretation, rather than an artistic or political choice to celebrate white skin. The texture of the figure’s hair underlines that distinction. Rarely do you see straight, fine hair on a figure; it ranges from wavy to tight curls.

Nina Rubinstein Alonso

Boston, Mass.

Krasner vs. the Police

Jennifer Gonnerman gives an incomplete picture of Philadelphia’s activist District Attorney, Larry Krasner (“Acts of Conviction,” October 29th). In the past few years, Philadelphia has evolved into a progressive utopia, but homicide and poverty rates remain stubbornly high. City leaders, including Krasner, use tactics of ideological warfare to combat the decades-old problems that have plagued the city. In his zeal to combat mass incarceration and social injustice, Krasner has dismissed victims of crime and looked upon members of law enforcement and their families as ignorant and intolerant. As a lifelong Philadelphian and progressive, I am dismayed that Krasner focusses so much on the accused, and so little on the victims. The streets of Philadelphia are more than just an ideological battleground.

Andrew Raffaele

Philadelphia, Pa.

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